I think if you already have a membership to Elegant Themes, going with their theme will be the cheapest and easiest option. You may also want to look into an LMS plugin like LearnDash, which could make your life a lot easier. Aside from that, for security, SEO, etc. it’s all about educating yourself about best practices for WordPress. Install a good SEO plugin and consider using a managed hosting company that takes care of most maintenance tasks and you should be well on your way.

I am leaning towards WordPress with Elegant Themes, DIVI, Learning Management System Layout pack since I have lifetime membership to Elegant Themes.

My website will be structured to help adults learning and becoming comfortable using computers. Maybe a learning center, a blog and a forum for members.

Any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Randy Booth

Unfortunately, these plugins are not compatible. However, some developers offer their plugins for more than one platform. Otherwise, you can usually find similar products on all platforms with a bit of search.

Thanks for your kind words, Jurgen

Thanks for the input! Much appreciated.

One of my clients used Solve360 Integrated with Jotform into WP, and they seem pretty happy with it

Zero BS CRM is a plugin for WordPress, not a CRM program in itself. It works together with WordPress, one of the CMS in this comparison. Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience working with CRM, so I can’t make any recommendations. However, maybe someone else in this comment section has an idea.

If we were to integrate with our current CRM (Copper), we would face some challenges:
1) It would require several additional platforms. Eg Zapier, Wufoo
2) Privacy concerns exist with multiple platforms. Eg Zapier, Wufoo
3) Recurring high costs of integration

Our eCommerce vendor is recommending Zero BS CRM (WordPress CRM Plugin). We did not see this in your list of comparisons.
What is the best CRM programme to meet our needs? Your expert advice is highly appreciated.

Thank you.

Best,

Kaliswarran Rao

Hey Nick, Thank u for this wonderful article. Yes, I agree with “CreateaWebsiteNow Editorial” that Joomla is a better choice than WordPress. It is not fast necessary to be a developer if u want to use Joomla. If anyone has a little bit of knowledge of HTML codes, u can use Joomla easily. Thank u!

Hi Diane, I have used Drupal in the past and currently use WordPress. My experience is that there is definitely a learning curve with both but the vast number of plugins, themes, tutorials, etc. for WordPress make it an attractive choice. My main site is for a local newspaper. I host it on WordPress.com and pay $300 a year and I can chat with their support people 24/7 and as long as I work with one of their themes, they provide detailed help. (They can still help with other themes but don’t train on them.) If I have a problem or can’t figure something out they explain it and often fix it. They will even figure out what custom CSS I need to change a font or color or alignment of something, etc. and give it to me in the chat.

I don’t know if I will stay there forever, or if I will always use WordPress. I am there now because the site has been running on wordpress.com for 12 years and I initially had the address like mysite.wordpress.com and now use our domain. Because I keep it there the old links will still work. Plus they handle backups and maintain WordPress automatically. I don’t have to worry about hackers or the site crashing and losing everything because I was inattentive to something.

There is no perfect solution and all cause occasional frustration and require some time. But I can’t imagine a scenario where the typical person would have to pay $100 a month.

The low barrier of entry is exactly the point. People choose WordPress because it allows them to have a site up and running very quickly and do it by themselves. No need to hire someone, you can get up and running in minutes. Plus, many developers appreciate the platform because it is easy to teach to clients.

On the other hand, I agree with you that there are a lot of badly made WordPress sites out there. As with everything in life, you need to be willing to educate yourself in order to use the tools at hand properly. For WordPress users that means learning how to make your site fast and keep it safe. Not everyone can or wants to be a programmer but there’s still stuff you need to be aware of or hire someone to take care of for you.

Wix and Squarespace come with their own set of issues, namely lack of flexibility and the fact that you don’t really own your site – you rent it. It’s also hard to move on to some other platform and take your content with you. Therefore, even for beginners, I’d still recommend WordPress, maybe in combination with a page builder plugin.

I think each of the CMS has their own market and areas they excel at. WordPress has definitely struck a nerve, otherwise it wouldn’t be the most successful platform out there. Sure, it has its issues and no system is perfect but WordPress has also helped revolutionize web publishing and given many people the means to start their own businesses and online presences that they otherwise would not have been able to.

So, while I don’t share your opinion, I appreciate you taking the time to leave such a detailed comment. Thank you!

WordPress is garbage. The biggest reason it has 30+% of the websites in the world is because it has such a low barrier of entry. But building a GOOD WordPress site is, in my opinion, way more difficult and expensive than building a decent Drupal or Joomla site. There are literally millions of bad and un-maintained WordPress sites on the web. It’s why hackers now almost exclusively target them.

I’ve literally NEVER had to buy a Drupal module to build a decent site for a customer. I’ve bought themes, but it’s relatively easy to customize several of the contributed open source themes. Drupal definitely has much better community oversight on their contributed modules and themes as well.

I don’t use Joomla as much but it’s still better than WordPress, and has (in my opinion) better e-commerce integrations than Drupal. You’ll pay for them though.

Telling beginners to use WordPress because it’s simple just invites them to build bad sites. If they’re not a programmer, they should use Wix or Squarespace if they really want to build their own. If they WANT to be a programmer, I’d still recommend Drupal – it’s a steeper learning curve, but will give them a better end result and better community support for budding developers.

Even most WordPress development firms do nothing except install paid plugins. A pretty hefty percentage of them couldn’t program their way out of a paper bag.

Compared to the other two solutions in this comparison, WordPress is definitely the most user friendly. However, every website system you start out with will have a learning curve. From your comment, it also sounds like you went with WordPress.com, not self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org). I recommend you look into installing WordPress locally to test drive it without any risk. Here are a few useful articles:

https://createawebsitenow.com/install-wordpress-locally-xampp/
https://createawebsitenow.com/customize-wordpress-101/
https://createawebsitenow.com/best-popular-wordpress-plugins/

Let us know if we can help somehow!